Earth.

Nearly six months have passed since Su Hao left.

Gao Liquan became the new commander of the 505th Army and the rank of lieutenant general. The organization and weapon configuration of the group remained unchanged, and the garrison area was still in its original position.

The cleaning of abandoned cities in the surrounding areas has been fully launched. From east to west, Maoming, Chenzhou, Changsha, Yueyang, Wanzhou, Ruoergai, Lhasa... These cities are connected into a curved line on the map. Each abandoned city has an infantry division or armored division affiliated to the 505th Army fighting. Their usual practice is to set up defenses outside the city and then maintain a sufficient distance from the local garrison. Rather than watching, it is to say that it is confrontation.

Within six months, this line of defense began in the southwest inland and continued to expand in all directions. Every change in the line of defense will cause opposition from the troops garrisons near the city. This situation is usually changed within two weeks. The local garrisons either received transfer orders from superiors or Yu Qian directly joined the 505th Army.

Gao Liquan's control and operation method of the entire army basically inherited the established policy left by Su Hao. With the help of Xu Renjie, the 505th Army established a huge General Administration of Intelligence. In response to the leaders of the troops stationed in various abandoned cities, the General Administration of Intelligence will carry out a series of actions based on the actual needs of the other party.

Many "worker bees" have been scattered out and infiltrated military units near various abandoned cities. This subtle influence is mainly aimed at officers and subordinate soldiers. When more and more people become "worker bees" or "quasi-worker bees", the highest commander will naturally lose control. If the other party recognizes the status quo and leaves honestly, it is naturally the best. If you want to resist stubbornly, there will always be an evolutionary "worker bees" who acts with the team to take action secretly and directly kill them, and replace them with the new "worker bees".

One becomes two, two becomes four, four becomes sixteen... This is a snowball-like geometric change law. Since I first got the first "worker bee" in Kunming City, the transformation of foreign personnel has now become extremely rapid. This is entirely due to the huge "worker bee" group.

In just half a year, the "worker bees" have added a total of five million, and there are more than 20 million "just-worker bees".

Everyone wants to become strong, and the demand for silver bones and crystals is also extremely strong. The current combat mission is no longer entirely completed by units under the 505th Army. Among the civilians who have been transformed into "worker bees", more and more hunter teams have appeared. Taking Tang Zi's "Black Scythe" mercenary group as an example, their organization belongs to the reserve service of the 505th Army, but does not require daily combat tasks. In addition to obeying the recruitment at critical moments, the mercenary group can act with other troops, hunt mutant creatures in abandoned cities, and harvest silver bones and crystals.

Every time the defense line expands, it means that all the abandoned cities inside the defense line have been cleaned up. This is actually no longer a secret within the 505th Army and the "bee swarm". But the outside world knows nothing about it. They don't know at all that millions of "worker bees" behind the defense line are eating up the abandoned cities and rebuilding their homes on dirty ruins.

As the first abandoned city to be cleared out, the number of residents in Kunming City has exceeded 120,000.

The power plant starts to supply power, which means that the city has entered a normal operation stage. The supply of tap water and gas is limited to fixed areas, and people returning to their homes work every day. Some are responsible for farming in the fields, while some are cleaning up plants and ruins in the city. Heavy machinery "rumbling" can be seen everywhere on the streets, dragging away abandoned vehicles blocking the roads to restore the roads. There are also dedicated people responsible for cleaning the streets that are covered with garbage. It is certainly impossible to restore the entire city to its original appearance in a short period of time, but the changes are obvious.

As a landmark building in Kunming City, a large number of people gathered under the "Golden Horse and Biji Fang" every day. Most of them are local refugees, and they have complex moods and loves that outsiders cannot compare to. No one knows that this square was once the specific location where Su Hao obtained the prototype potion. The indigenous people just had strong feelings about it. The legendary magical scene of "Golden and Biji Fang" probably would never appear. After all, the initial ancient archways had long been destroyed, and later existences were just reconstructions. Although they did not exist for a long time, the surface was covered with mottled blood. They were traces left when the virus broke out, which meant death, war and chaos, and rebirth and tomorrow.

The funeral home in the suburbs of the city was one of the first facilities to be used. When the crematorium was almost stopped, more than a dozen huge pits were dug out of the original Paoma Mountain cemetery. Trucks transported a large number of corpses from the city to burn and fill them up every day.

The remains of the dead can be seen everywhere on the streets. The specific gender cannot be distinguished from the appearance or clothes. The corpses have long rotten, leaving only dead bones. Rats and ants have become the two largest animals in the city. The removal of mutant creatures still lasts for a long time. Although most of them have been annihilated and there are no signs of group formation in the city, scattered individuals always appear from time to time in some rooms, corners, and sewers.

The city is too big. Even in peacetime, it is difficult to clean and inspect every room. Not to mention that now, only a few thousand armed "worker bees" are responsible for the safety of the city. People can only blockade every cleaned area, and the most important and most uncomfortable work every day is still the cleaning and burning of corpses.

In the "worker bees" group, the first lunatic appeared.

He was an old man over 60 years old. He joined Cao Rui's team a year ago and was a scholar with a modest attitude and elegant atmosphere. After returning to Kunming, he rushed to his former home as soon as possible. The old man clearly remembered the afternoon when his only daughter was eaten by zombies. He refused others' help and walked into the house alone, picked up the black and smelly bones scattered on the ground one by one, and then cleaned the room like in peacetime, scrubbing every piece of furniture with a rag, opened the window, released the long-stagnated air, and made the whole room fresh and dry... After all, the old man slowly put his daughter's bones on the bed, put a beautiful dress he collected from the outside store on the surface of the bones, looked at it for a long time, and cried silently.

The "bee swarm" is a tight-knit whole. During this period, people kept comforting the elderly and came to help them to relieve them. The elderly always smiled with tears in their eyes. He admitted that he needed to be alone. There was nothing more miserable than witnessing the corpses of relatives. However, that's it. When others made breakfast the next morning and invited the elderly to have breakfast, they found that the elderly were lying on the bed and hugging the bones tightly. Their mind had become chaotic and could no longer recover from their awakening.

Death and living are obstacles that no one can overcome. Although the "worker bee" has the most powerful power and thinking ability in the world, it is ultimately limited by reason and emotion. From the perspective of biological evolution, this is undoubtedly a defect. However, we would rather take this defect and go all the way to the end of evolution. Because in the human dictionary, the name of this defective emotion is called "love".

People began to spontaneously clean the Jinma Bijifang Square. There were always some blood that could not be erased, and the hard bones were transported away and burned. Whether they were once humans or zombies, it was no longer important.

There are different flowers piled up under the archway every day. They are all wild grasses and bouquets picked by the children. There are white daisies, light red syrup grass, and tender yellow dandelions... The children did not know how to use flowers to express their grief at first, but a little boy saw an adult put a bouquet of wild chrysanthemums there, and sat there alone and cried for a long time. The ignorant child was very curious, so he went home to ask his father. The father was silent for a long time and slowly told him: "In the sky, there are many souls looking at us and blessing us."

The act of placing flowers quickly became a game between children. After all, adults don’t have much time to do similar actions. They must work hard for food and to live better. But no matter what, the story between a group of children and flowers has been passed down. Not only in this square, in the communities where people once lived, in the skyscrapers that deserve memories, and in the rooms where they lived, there are different thoughts and wishes continuing.

After the first phase of cleaning work, Lao Song returned to Kunming.

The building that once lived still stands, and the camphor trees in the yard of the community are growing lushly. It took Lao Song nearly two hours to cut off the weeds that grew wildly from the green belt with a sickle and clear out a road leading to the corridor unit door.

The room originally belonged to him was covered with garbage and dust, and spider webs were everywhere in the corners of the wall. Several geckos were lying on the wall and staring at strangers who suddenly broke in. In the living room, Lao Song saw the corpse whose head was chopped off by himself. She was left with only a pile of scattered bones, and the shadow covered by her complete chest became the favorite comfort nest for cockroaches... All this made Lao Song feel moved and a little sad. The kind-hearted old teacher who liked him in his memory could never survive again. Although he was now the highest leader of the "bee swarm" on the earth, as long as he was willing, countless women rushing to become his companions. However, Lao Song never had a similar idea. He kept remembering this corpse and remembering every detail that happened that day.

Every survivor has his own pain and sad stories preserved in the depths of his mind.

Reoccupying the abandoned city is undoubtedly something to celebrate. However, every refugee who returns to the city will involuntarily find the houses they had lived in, look at the old and messy objects, search for photos from dust and garbage, and strive to find a small decoration that they had liked by themselves and their lovers. There were once their parents, wives, children, relatives, and friends...

They are all dead, and I am still alive.

This is of course worthy of gratitude, but it is also the most tragic thing in the world.

When fleeing, people push, scold, and fight for each other. For a little food, it is common to draw swords and kill people and bully the weak. Rape women, even rob each other's children and eat meat, kill a group of people to share the food and seek survival... Dirty and despicable atrocities, at that time, probably no one thinks it is a sin. People have various reasons to swear, believing that it is the most primitive instinct under the situation of despair.

Residents returning to Kunming City have continued to commit suicide.

The first incident was a middle-aged man in his forties. He jumped from the top of the 16th floor with a photo of his family. People found a suicide note in his pocket of clothes. The man used the most painful sentence to express his repentance to his forgotten behavior. He admitted that death was a relief for him and atonement for him.

A woman who returned from Xinliuzhou Base City committed suicide by hanging herself on a rope. She worked in a bar in the base city, and even she couldn't tell how many men she had had. She just didn't want to be starved to death, but after she came back, she felt a strong sense of guilt for her long-dead husband. Even she couldn't tell why. At the worst and most desperate moments, she did not have the idea of ​​"death", but tried her best to live without any effort. But when she saw hope, returned to her home, and saw her husband's clothes in the dusty closet, she completely collapsed.

There was also an officer who entered the city with his troops and had been promoted to a lieutenant. He was responsible for managing the order of the No. 17 incinerator in the suburbs. When the lieutenant jumped into the incinerator with a bone of the dead, all the soldiers and staff around him were stunned. The flames and high temperatures instantly swallowed the lieutenant, and he did not scream from beginning to end. When cleaning up the lieutenant's relics, people found a diary. It recorded that the lieutenant was still a refugee and was fleeing.

He killed two companions on the road to death and used human flesh to survive the whole process of the most difficult days. The diary was recorded until the day before the lieutenant committed suicide. The lines were filled with pain and self-blame. He felt that he was an ogre devil with no morality and felt that there were wronged souls around him at any time to demand his life. Although he had become an officer and was already a "worker bee" with a fifth-level strengthening constitution, the lieutenant was still full of guilt. He could do nothing except suicide.

A large number of psychological counseling groups have been established, and people are using various ways to get rid of painful memories of the past. But some things are inevitable after all, even Lao Song himself feels heartbroken and uncomfortable from time to time. Especially when he wakes up in the morning, he often finds that the pillows and quilts are soaked in tears.

"Build a monument for those who die."

This suggestion was recognized by everyone. The new monument quickly became the most important part of all work. In just over two weeks, a thirty-meter-high reinforced concrete picket was erected on the square, which was originally covered with corpses and bones. There was no fancy design, just a pyramid-shaped column, plus a square base. There was no text, no pattern, and no fences and managers were set up around, but everyone who saw it knew that it was the new residence of all the dead since the outbreak of the virus, a tomb specially set up for the soul.

Zhang Xichen is forty-one years old this year. He is a middle-aged man with a thin body and a silent personality.

He likes quietness and likes to sit alone in the corner and smoke. Even after becoming a "worker bee", he still maintains this habit.

Zhang Xichen once looked forward to returning to this city indefinitely. But when he really walked into the familiar street and into the room full of countless memories, he felt trembling all over and couldn't help but jump off the roof.

This thought had been in his mind for several months, biting his heart like an ant.

I glanced at the alarm clock on the table and it was now 2:39 in the middle of the night.

Zhang Xichen kept looking at the photo with his wife in the frame. He wanted to smoke a cigarette to relieve his nervousness, but he couldn't turn on the lighter for several consecutive times, so he could only crush the cigarette and throw it away in anger.

The original family was very happy. Until the virus broke out, the zombies rushed in and dug a big hole in the belly of the wife who was about to give birth. That day, Zhang Xichen saw the child who appeared in front of him in this cruel way with his own eyes. It was a baby girl who couldn't even scream "dad" and "mother", so he was torn in half by the two zombies, stuffed into his mouth like a hungry ghost who had never eaten in his eight lives and chewed wildly.

Outside the New Chengdu Base City, Zhang Xichen met a very beautiful woman. She had just finished giving birth less than two weeks ago, and she was extremely weak. Her husband died and all the food was eaten up. The woman begged Zhang Xichen to save herself and the baby in the cradle. In return, the woman promised to stay with Zhang Xichen forever. That night, the woman served Zhang Xichen with her mouth.

At that time, Zhang Xichen didn't have much food himself, and there were only two newly caught mice in his backpack, a small bag of fresh grass roots, and two sour and immature green pears.

The woman may be hungry, and she drank a pot of rat meat soup so clean that she didn't even have any bones left.

Zhang Xichen was completely furious. He also felt hungry. The physiological satisfaction given by women before could not replace the feeling of being full. The woman also felt that she had obviously done a little too much. She knelt on the ground and begged repeatedly, saying that she was really hungry and lost her mind and would never do this again. However, Zhang Xichen, who was angry, couldn't listen at all. He had seen something that was too physically exhausted during the escape, but never thought that such a thing would happen to him one day.
Chapter completed!